Take the Rank Out of Drank

Advertising came into its own during the '20s, having learned that nothing sells a product like fear. I imagine executives sitting around in a plush highrise meeting room somewhere, staring at each other with bug-eyes, saying "How can we scare people into buying all this CRAP?"

Social anxiety always helps. From the November 22, 1930 New Yorker I bring you "The Savoy Cocktail Book," which you'd better buy if you don't want your parties to suck.

Of course, you have a bar in your pent-house, but even that does not insure social success!

Do you find that guests are glad to put their foot on the rail the first time, but seldom return? Do you feel like the girl who was often a bridesmaid but never a bride?

Of course, you have all your liquor analyzed, so you can't blame your bootlegger.

Perhaps the trouble is with you. Perhaps it's the way you mix the cocktails that bars you from the popularity you feel that you deserve.

"Whew!" Said a bunch of advertising executives. "That's done! Now how can we make them frightened of RADIOS..."

Incidentally, "The Savoy Cocktail Book" was "compiled and amplified" by Harry Craddock of London's Savoy bar. As his biography at the bottom of the advertisement says, he was "the man who took the rank out of drank."